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High school student Robyn Lakes doesn’t let diabetes hold her back.
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On a family ski trip a few years ago, Robyn Lakes remembers being so thirsty she had to stop every few minutes to eat snow. She didn’t think much of it, but once she got home to North Vancouver, she couldn’t be satiated, regularly coming home after school to down half a jug of orange juice. She was exhausted, too. After finally going to see her doctor, she learned the reason she couldn’t be sated: type 1 diabetes. She was just 11.
“I just started crying,” the poised 16-year-old says in an interview at a coffee shop near her high school. “I was so scared. I’d heard of it, but I didn’t even know what it was. It was such a shock for me.”
Also called juvenile diabetes, type 1 diabetes is a serious condition where the body makes little or no insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas that’s essential for the body to metabolize glucose. Without insulin, excessive levels of sugar build up in the blood and urine.
Heart and kidney disease, stroke, blindness, and amputation are potential complications.
Lakes is one of 300,000 Canadians with type 1 diabetes who must take insulin to survive.
She uses an insulin pump, a wearable device that delivers the crucial hormone automatically. It’s a big improvement over manually injecting it via a “pen” or syringe, she says, and having to calculate the ratio of carbohydrates she has consumed to the insulin she needs. (Although having done that for years is probably one reason she’s now an honours math student.)
“With the pump, I just press a few buttons and I’m done,” she says. “It’s a lot easier.”
Besides the kind of extreme thirst and lethargy Lakes experienced, warning signs of type 1 diabetes include frequent urination, increased appetite, sudden weight loss, sudden vision changes, heavy or laboured breathing, and stupor or unconsciousness. These symptoms may occur suddenly.
Type 1 diabetes (also called juvenile diabetes) can occur at any age but most commonly is diagnosed from infancy to the late 30s. Although the causes are not entirely known, scientists believe the immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The incidence rate of type 1 diabetes is rising by three to five percent annually in Canada, with the greatest rise occurring in five- to nine-year-olds.
In type 2 diabetes, which typically develops after age 40 but can appear earlier, the pancreas produces insulin but either in inadequate amounts or the body does not use it effectively. Treatment includes diet, exercise, self-monitoring of blood glucose and, sometimes, oral drugs or insulin.
An avid snowboarder and a member of the Robert Malcolm Memorial Pipe Band, Lakes doesn’t let diabetes hold her back.
“It’s more responsibility, but I try not to let it get in the way,” she says.
However, she’s all too aware that without a cure, she faces a lifetime of treatment. To help raise money for research, she’ll be participating in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Telus Walk to Cure Diabetes, which takes place on Sunday (June 12) at 11 a.m. at Stanley Park. Lakes’s goal is to raise $7,500.
Jeffrey Matthews, vice president of scientific affairs of JDRF’s Canadian clinical-trial network, says that tremendous advancements have been made in helping people manage diabetes. Take the JDRF’s “artificial pancreas”. The automated system will enable people to administer insulin based on real-time changes in blood-sugar levels. It combines the use of continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps with software that calculates the accurate amount of insulin needed at any given time. The technology will allow for precise blood-glucose control and the elimination of extreme highs and lows, significantly reducing the risk of the serious complications.
According to Matthews, the technology still needs fine-tuning, but people who’ve tried the artificial pancreas say it made a huge difference in their day-to-day life.
“They’re just amazed,” he says. “For once, they didn’t have to think about diabetes.”
However, he reminds that the disease has no cure.
“These are revolutionary treatments, but these are stop-gap measures,” Matthews says. “It’s something we can do in the meantime.”
Matthews is confident a cure is in sight. To get there, finding funds for research is crucial.
“There’s a dearth of funding for the early stages of clinical work,” he says. “Governments around the world are struggling with how to deal with this, to fund the early work appropriately, and Canada is no exception. Pharmaceutical companies are reticent to get involved; it’s so risky.”
At the same time, he says there are hundreds of drugs sitting on laboratory shelves waiting to be tested.
Last year, the JDRF, with support from the federal government, announced the launch of its Clinical Trial Network Centre at the University of Waterloo in alliance with McMaster University.
Matthews says expanding that network to other parts of the country, in particular B.C. and Alberta, is a priority for the JDRF.
The JDRF’s Clinical Trials Connection is an online tool that provides information about clinical trials around the world. It makes current and upcoming research easily accessible to the public and walks people through the steps if they want to take part in clinical trials.
“From a patient’s perspective, participating in clinical trials pushes things forward,” Matthews says.
